The average Oregon voter will snooze through this, but a committee appointed by the legislative leadership will meet next week to perform a politically important task: writing the ballot titles for the two tax measures headed to the Jan. 26 ballot.

Critics of the tax measure have already claimed that the Democratic leadership is trying to pull a fast one on voters. They say the state should stick with the normal process of having the attorney general write the ballot title, followed by the Oregon Supreme Court's review.

Instead, the Legislative committee (made up of four Democrats and two Republicans) will write the ballot title, followed by the court's review. Senate President Peter Courtney, D-Salem, vowed in a press release that the committee "will write a ballot title that will make it clear to voters what they are voting on."

The committee, headed by Senate Majority Leader Richard Devlin, D-Lake Oswego, and Rep. Arnie Roblan, D-Coos Bay, will hold hearings at 1 p.m. Tuesday and 1 p.m. Wednesday at the Capitol. The draft language of the ballot titles for the two measures will be posted here at 9 a.m. Monday.

Democrats faced particularly bitter protests in 2007 on the ballot title of a measure they sent voters rewriting a property rights constitutional amendment. In that case, the legislature simply wrote the ballot title, based on polling and focus-group data about which language would most sway voters, and it included an exemption from review by the state Supreme Court. It included the ballot title in a bill passed the same day the rewrite of the property rights law was referred to voters as Measure 49.

Opponents sued in federal court but lost.

Measure 49 ended up passing quite handily. This time, the Democrats opened up the process, but they still keep a large measure of control.

The wording of ballot titles can make a big difference in the success or failure of a measure, and that certainly may have been the case with Measure 49, a complicated land-use issue. It may not be quite so true on the more straightforward question of raising corporate taxes and income taxes on wealthier individuals.